EVENTS

Thank god I don’t go to Bob Jones University

I wouldn’t last a week thanks to their fascist student handbook. The 2012-2013 version was just released, and boy is it full of goodies.

No listening to music that “borrows from the styles [of] rock, rap, jazz, and country.” Yes, that insiduous jazz music that kids these days love so much is corrupting our youth! Damn you, Dave Brubeck!

No headphones allowed, because you can’t be trusted listening to music in private.

You can only watch PG-13 movies if accompanied by faculty or staff in their home. R rated movies are right out. And you can’t watch any movie in a public theater when school is in session. Jesus hates Finding Nemo.

No playing video games rated above Everyone +10. To put that in perspective, the next rating level is Teen. Apparently things suited for people age 13 and older is not suitable for Christians age 18 and older.

What I want to know is if anyone voluntarily signs up for this fucked up boot camp, or if they’re all forced to go by fucked up parents. This is more like a prison than a university. I’m sure all these students will come out of their education totally prepared for the real world. They just have no never go out in public lest their ears explode from a rock song played in a restaurant or their eyes shrivel up at the sight of an R-rated movie billboard.

This is post 5 of 49 of Blogathon. Donate to the Secular Student Alliance here.

Chris and I drove around the campus of Bob Jones about 7 years ago. It was appropriately terrifying. They could just smell the sin on us through our locked car doors and rolled-up windows. And they stared. I’ll never forget the stares…

My father has a degree from BJU and a few female relatives have attended but dropped out.

Yes, there are teens who “voluntarily” go to BJU and its close cousin Pensacola, because they are told from the time they are old enough to talk that these and one or two other schools are the only Good Christian Universities in America (Liberty is too liberal!) and that every Christian should be thrilled and honored to attend. Failure to attend is tantamount to spitting in poor Jesus’s face. There are private high schools which are specifically engineered to graduating kids into these colleges. Four of my five cousins are the product of these high schools and they’re a mess. (One went to BJU and dropped out and became a pastor’s wife at the same church-slash-school she’d been attending her entire life. Two went to another highly conservative uni in Ohio the name of which I forget. The youngest, I just realized I don’t know where or if she’s going to college because I’ve been avoiding communicating with this side of the family like the plague since I finally ragequit the religion.)

I’m not even kidding here, it’s a cult. I was under a lot of pressure to go to either BJU or Pensacola. But not from my dad, who became *slightly* less conservative as he got older and encouraged me to go anywhere but, because he realized about 20 years too late how much of his youth was wasted there.

I do, however, have the psychic power to identify married couples who went to BJU and Pensacola. Always married couples, because there’s hardly such a thing as someone who graduates without getting hitched the next weekend. It’s expected. They always have haircuts stuck in the 80s, men in suits no matter the occasion, women in floor-length cotton dresses that look like they’re from Little House on the Prairie. And clutching Bibles, of course.

My father didn’t marry a girl from BJU but rather a girl he met at a church dinner while on tour with the gospel choir. He had been dating a Japanese student at BJU but was “counseled” that while it didn’t violate the ban on black and white students dating per se, he should really think twice before marrying outside his color.

Apparently, even Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” would be unacceptable despite all his “god” talk on the album liner. Or maybe it’s because many jazz greats were black. I bet their college radio station plays Pat Boone once an hour.

Job Bones U isn’t the only one with ridiculous rules dictating the behaviour of students. Many unaccredited “christian college” have much more restrictive rules. Nearly all unaccredited colleges are run by religions.

What I want to know is if anyone voluntarily signs up for this fucked up boot camp, or if they’re all forced to go by fucked up parents.

It’s probably for a variety of reasons. Some are probably “true believers” who “think” they’re going to get an education, and quickly become disillusioned. Some are probably sorta- or non-believers whose parents are paying the bills and dictate where the person goes. The only tolerable reason for attenting one is if a kid was given a scholarship, but that’s unlikely – most of them are profit-driven businesses, publishing their own overpriced books.

I can just imagine an 18 year trying to convince the parents that state college is cheaper, closer and more likely to get the kid a job…and the parents screaming “I don’t care, you’re getting a ‘christian education’!” The idea of parents wasting money on such an “education” is unfathomable – not only are they paying more for it, the person who goes cannot transfer any credits to an accredited college, nor can the “diplomas” be used to get jobs. It’s a money pit.

Compared to Job Bones and other such places, Brigham Young and Liberty University look credible. I’m not singing their praises, but at least they are properly accredited for some programs; Job Bones is only accredited by a “christian” accrediting body. That makes it no better than a diploma mill.

I went to BJU for a year, due to that being the best (hahaha) college of the ones my parents approved for me. It was either that or a true ‘Bible college’ (institutes with training only for Christian ministry). Life at BJU introduced me to more freedom than I knew from my extremely conservative fundamentalist home. I had no idea how horrible some conditions were. BJU definitely fits the concept of a cult, less radical than some religious cults, but still abusive, especially emotionally and mentally. Nouthetic ‘counseling’ is huge with that crowd. BJU has a bad case of scholastic inbreeding, much of the faculty having terminal degrees from BJU, which is of course still only TRACS accredited. As a young adult in fundamentalism, I had no concept of the damage such an institution can cause; the well-known issue of racism was dismissed as religious persecution; lesser-known issues like sexual abuse dismissal, Nazi art, and shady financial practices have only recently been discussed.
One of the most difficult personal issues to endure at BJU was the fact that I was coming to terms with my bisexuality; the diatribes from the fundamentalist pulpit and the hatred were undeniable. I have an opportunity to march in the 2012 NYC pride parade with a group of LGBTQIA alumni, former students, and former faculty from BJU (lgbt-bju . org). We are out, proud, and asserting that yes, there are gay students at the Bob. The hate speech and intolerance must stop. Students should no longer have to hear that gay people = pedophiles = practitioners of bestiality. Students should no longer have to hear that the best solution for gay people is for them to be bludgeoned to death with rocks as in Biblical times, both of which were espoused in the pulpit by the then Chancellor, Bob Jones III.
Thanks Jen, and good luck with the rest of Blogathon!

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